"Oh, my dear young friend! . . . All taps . .. " IS vanItIes. ... "Vell . . . I des-say they may be, Sir; but vich is your partickler wanity? Vich wan- ity do you like the flavour on best, Sir?" O N March 31st, 1836, almost precisely one hundred years ago, there appeared in London the first of twenty m<?nthly installments of "The PoSthul110US Papers of the Pick- wick Cluh." Mr. Samuel Pickwick, addressing his fe llow- Pickwickians on the eve òf his departure, observed that "travelling was in a dangerous state, and the minds of coachmen were un- settled," and twenty-four-year-old Charles Dickens, who alone in England could have thought of such a sentence, sauntered, with brisk cockney assurance, straight into iml11ortality. You may want to take note of a couple of books full of the centenary spirit. "A Pickwick Portrait Gallery" (243 pages, $3) is a pleasant collection of essays by various hands (all English) about the Pickwickians, their friends, and enemies. It is illustrated frol11 the original plates by Seymour and "Phiz." Dr. Logan Clendening, too, has been very happily inspired to celebrate the advent of a great centenary. He has been to England and has actually re- traced, from Goswell Street to Dulwich (where Dickens, the liar, tells us Pick- wick finally settled down), the course of the immortal journey . To profes- sional Dickensians the Doctor's agree- able little book, "A Handbook to Pick- wick Papers" (1 72 pages, $2.50), will need no recommendation, and it merits no less the attention of garden-variety Dickens-readers. Perhaps Dr. Clenden- ing will forgive our letting it serve today not as text but as pretext. Before starting "Pickwick," Dickens wrote to his future wife, "The work will be no joke, but the emolul11ent is too tempting to resist." Was ever state- l11ent more squarely beside the pointr The work has turned out to be the 1110St titanic joke ever conceived, and the "emolument" has been more tempting than Dickens ever knew, for it is the love and laughter of untellable genera- tions. I have nothing better to recom- mend you this week, current liter- ary fare heing relatively insipid. Reread "Pickwick," and perhaps you will tind compreh nsible the fact that during its issuance in parts an installment was, to thousands of Englishmen, not some- thing that arrived each 111onth, but BOOKS I n Memoriam rather each month "vas a dull, gray in- terval separating two issues of "Pick- wick." You may even understand why a noted priest upon his deathbed called not for the New 'I'estal11e nt but for "Pickwick." It is not a good novel? 'rrue, but as Mr. Chesterton has pointed out, neither is it a bad novel, for it is not a novel at all. \Vith such a neatly 111onnt- ed, ned,tly dead 111asterpiece of fiction as "Madalne Bovary," for exalnple, it has nothing in COllUI10n. \Vith the "Odys- sey" Of the tHrth of Jason it has every- thing in CO1l1111011 . It is not a novel be- cause it is a legend, perhaps the only great c0111ic legend in literary history. I t is not well constructed ? Why, sirs, it is not constructed at all. It is 111erely created. There never was a book in which such perpetual fun is made of the very idea of a plot, and in which that fun acts as an indestructihle preservative. The only plot in "Pickwick" is a gleeful conspiracy on the part of the characters k h "" to ta e over t e story at every op- "" r:; :;,':,,:: ,,:,,::,, ::;::' ," , \ ' I ' \:'{::, ;:: , :::,::!: L'. ',,:,:::, '.I , ' t , , a,::::; ' , 4,':" : ,..; 83 I' portunity, bind it, gag it, and throw it out the window. Progression in "Pick- wick"? There is none. Indeed, the whole point is to insure plenty of re- tardation. All the characters are hard at work, or at play, raising obstacles. \Vhen Sal11 WeIler attends the "swar- rey," he does so not to help out the story hut to detain it. He goes to give Mr. John Sn1auker and Mr. "Blazes" , 1'uckle a chance to delay everything with the in11110rtal aÌ1nlcssness of their conversatIon. It is vulgar? No, it is popular. It is a delI10cratic epic, a perfect, because un- conscious, epitome of the shrewd, hu- lnorOllS, unbluffahle intelligence of the people when the people is at its best. Its presiding genius may be the respect- able Mr. Pickwick (whose respectabil- ity is really only tights-and-gaiters- deep), but hs hero is Sam Weller, who, I suppose, would be greatly surprised if informed that he is a proletarian. Sam Weller appears in the yard of the White Hart Inn, walks in to the story in Chap- AU I)tìiON -bU 2-4 p, IY\ Clf t: :t: ,-;; , ' ..'/ ! >; \ - , : "::::.(.. :., "." ".:...: : +"':'1 >H(!, ;-t , , :t:}' iW 2 t, , , ". :" --:. : .....>>., ::, M..": ,:,..,":' ','" \ : . ......>: : ': ,$,': :) : ' %. :::t ":;- _ ::.:\o . . ? ."',:" ">;:.: f - ; :,'ii': :: } .k.' , : ,'::,r' r; 1:;.i}:',"':) ", "}\: " , : : , : l ' . :::.... .... . .. ,',- >$,..' ......:-... - ............... . r------ / ;' -:7 :...,<7.rl :" ... .. ,/ ... " ,"', "jot', '0"" t .;\ : : ' > :',:::: , :j:" :,' \'\:': :,,\:: '..,.., " .., ..,..,Ø.. :: .:: . .:.r.:":,,:.. . _.::é ':: .: .. : ,: { 'j:\: : l':V\ ", , "'\ }' :t . .l ;::;:: :::: . ':};, . f \;:::" ':1' ,) , l "''! , , .....-..: .{}::\ ;/ ......; ::.. : . .'''.".':.'. ;.:.: Ù. ..: .:.' . . ..:-' ,; rk!: ::';':;,: )l, . -----""^ -p"",-,,7' -h. \C . ((He says allile needs is a sponsor.))